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Thoughts on Assassin's Creed The Lost Archives


poetic_justice_

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Two things you should know before reading this:

 

One, I am a completist working through the Assassin's Creed series.

Two, I played ACB and ACIII before playing AC Revelations, which provided a non-chronological view of the series plotline but gave an advantage to seeing the big picture and how this little DLC fits into the larger AC story.

 

The most important criteria for any game is FUN. If it isn't fun, why play it? In short, based on a pure fun factor, The Lost Archives is the most useless DLC of the entire AC series. TLA is like a horrible blind date. Assassin's Creed Revelations sets you up with her cousin, Assassin's Creed Revelations: The Lost Archives. Knowing nothing else, you think TLA will be hot because TLA and ACR share the family resemblance. However, as soon as TLA shows up, you wish the date was already over; she doesn't look anything like here cousin.

 

Ubisoft: "Hey good-looking! Ready for our date? Using a first-person perspective, let's build blocks and jump around in the Animus! Doesn't that sound like fun?

Me: "No."

Ubisoft: "Alright! Let's do it anyway!"

 

Ubisoft:"Oh, no! You're dead!"

Me:"What?"

Ubisoft:"You were killed by something you couldn't even see! Care to try again?"

Me:"No."

 

Ubisoft: "Too bad! This is fun! Let's do it for six more levels!"

Me: "This is stupid. Let's not."

Ubisoft: "Watch out for those lasers! Oh, no! You're dead!"

Me: "What?"

Ubisoft: "A laser you couldn't see killed you!"

Me: "How can a laser I can't see... What the heck?! Why are there lasers? This is Assassin's Creed! There are no lasers in Assassin's Creed!"

Ubisoft: "Well, before, yes, but technically we aren't in Assassin's Creed right now. We're in the Animus 2.0! And I like lasers: greenish-yellow ones and pink ones. Oooh, watch out for the pink! It's gonna get you!"

 

Me: "I was just getting used to the idea of floating blocks...."

Lazer: [sizzling flesh] BZZT!

Ubisoft: (giggles) "The pink one just got you! Funny!"

 

Me: "Pink lasers? This! You! What? There are no blocks in Assassin's Creed! There are no lasers in Assassin's Creed! This whole DLC is a mutation of Minecraft, Tetris, and Star Wars lightsabers! If you are smart enough to design an Animus that can recreate dead people's memories from the genes of their offspring, why are you so crazy as to KILL THE OFFSPRING AS SOON AS THEY ENTER THE ANIMUS?! They are dead before you see the memories!"

 

Ubisoft: "Another laser you couldn't see just killed you!"

Me: "What?! How..."

Ubisoft: "A third laser you couldn't see killed you!"

Me: "Knock it off!"

Ubisoft: "A big, floating black block just killed you!"

Me: "STOP!"

Ubisoft: "Your blocks not spawning under your feet just killed you!"

Me: "BUT I SAW THEM SPAWN!"

Ubisoft: "The wind blowing just killed you!

Me: "DAH! AAGH!"

Ubisoft: "Gravity just killed you!

Me: "GAW! You! BASTARD!"

Ubisoft: "Would you like a three-second lingering view of the floor where you died?"

Me: "NOOOO!"

Ubisoft: "Ok, here it is. Ooh, another big black block, and it's floating! Oh, make that two floating blocks! Let's add more! Lasers, lasers, LAAAZEEERSS!!!!"

 

Me: (sobbing)"I just want to go back to Constantinople, please! Make it stop!"

 

FUN FACTOR: 0/10

REPLAY FACTOR: -10/10 (I want my time back)

 

HMMM FACTOR: 8/10

This is where The Lost Archives shines: psychology. Horrible graphics, controls & environment design aside, the Lost Archives delves deeply into the motives of Lucy Stillman and Clay Kaczmarek (the Subject 16 man). On that note, the psychology of TLA is brilliant. The conversation snapshots, letters, emails, and memories of these two characters truly show how they became the people they are.

 

The memories of Clay and his father were particularly raw; it was a pleasant shock to see Ubisoft could still make its characters believable and human. After all the philosophical, "quasi-religious while pretending not to be" mumbo jumbo the series had become bogged down in, The Lost Archives diverted from the working Assassin's Creed...

 

Nothing is logical. Every plothole is permitted.

 

...to something that actually makes sense: family, a loving but misunderstanding father with high expectations, Bill's mentoring of a young Clay while supposedly neglecting Lucy, Lucy's loneliness, her perception of abandonment, Abstergo playing mind games with both Lucy and Clay, and finally

 

[spoiler=kk]Lucy's abandonment issues leading to her betrayal of Desmond and purposely trapping Clay in the Animus.

 

 

The psychological weight of this DLC to the AC storyline is huge. However, it's like the best performance was done after the film was over, the credits had rolled, and most of the audience has left the theater. Sadly, it's too little, too late, and served on a plate that doesn't match the rest of the AC offerings already on the table. By the time the story of AC Revelations finishes, the series has dug itself into such a deep hole with rabbit trails and dead-end plots, many players no longer care about Ezio and his mystic philosophy.

 

The idealogical conflict between Templars and Assassins had dissolved into meaningless soup, and players stopped caring why they had to fight with Ezio in Rome for 65 hours and Constantinople for another 25. The game devolved from "Why kill?" to "Let me jump around on buildings, stab people, or maybe poison them and laugh while they flail about in the street." Forget plot, motives, characters... ACB and ACR's lackluster storylines drove that plane and every character on it nose first into the ground.

 

This DLC, storywise (and only in terms of story, not gameplay) was a phoenix rising from the ashes, a much needed breath of fresh air for the overarching plotline of the AC universe. It's sad the $10 price tag is so high and the gameplay controls are so sub-par; The Lost Archives is simultaneously one of the best developments in the AC story and the worst idea to bear the Assassin's Creed label. Ubisoft's best bet in 2011-2012 would have been to either sell it for $4 or give it away for free. With the release of the PS4 in less than two weeks, TLA is being pushed into the back of the warehouse and forgotten.

 

Ironically, the worst gameplay of the entire series is coupled with some of the deepest character development of the AC series. For die-hard fans who don't want to miss that, one possible solution that costs $0 is to look up The Lost Archives story on YouTube. Don't buy and play the game to get the story; The Lost Archives simply isn't worth your time or money. Other than completists or AC die-hards (I'm the former, and partially thanks to this DLC's gameplay, no longer the latter), there is simply nothing in The Lost Archives to warrant a second glance.

Edited by poetic_justice_
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  • 9 months later...
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I was not aware this was just more Desmond Memory crap. I'm playing through the Ezio Collection on PS4 and just need to play through this to finish up the third platinum. Ugh. I thought this was going to be more open world murdering goodness. What a disappointment.

Edited by ravens52bears54
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My thoughts? It's a piece of shit! I'm not saying that first person games suck as a whole or anything but just that they simply are not meant for me. That's why I don't purchase any with Bioshock 1 being the big exception (still curse my friend for having brought over AvP and installed it in my system).

 

Anyways, I totally understand it when others like it so that's ok. I LOVE third person games. Could go on for hours why but that's not the point. So I'm utterly annoying that anybody at Ubisoft figured it would be a great idea to implement first person gameplay in a third person game. On top of it, it's piece of shit dream or whatever you call it sequences. Heck, I would rather have paid for another costume and/or map pack than for fp bullcrack. [/rant]

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  • 7 months later...

I completely agree. Playing this in the Ezio collection SHOULD BE OPTIONAL.

I would like to Slap the idiot who thought what everyone needed was.. What ever the Hell this dlc is supposed to be.

I need the trophies for the Plat.

I have to get the trophies.

I haven't been this angry and destructive over a game since I was a child.

 

The Lost Archives should have been a trip to Alexandria! to explore the Library. Not a first person plat former about a character I couldn't care less about.

 

"Ive been part of this community since 2013.. and this is my first post.. weird."

Edited by Keirris
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  • 3 months later...
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  • 3 years later...

I didn't mind this until the last couple of memories that became much more difficult.  I started asking why the heck is this first person?  I can't see where I'm landing nor where the lasers are all around me.  That became frustrating.  It is somewhat reminiscent, for me, of Portal and Mirror's Edge, both games that I enjoyed but they didn't require quite as much exact platforming and were better designed for a first person viewpoint.

 

It is also based on Clay, aka Subject 16, not Desmond.  So for those who follow the AC storyline in the modern day closely it provides some interesting information and back story.

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